St. Louis (KSDK) - A lot of us were on the edge of our seat during the so-called "seven minutes of terror" as the rover was descending onto the Marian surface.

But no one more so than a local teacher who has spent the last few days at the NASA Research Center in Ohio.

Second grade teacher Christine Nobbe was watching the live NASA broadcast in her hotel room near the Glen Research Center. She teaches at the Center for Creative Learning in the Rockwood District.

Nobbe says NASA tapped her and 125 others from the around the country because of their skills on Twitter, Facebook, and other social media.

She says she talked with many of the engineers we saw last night at mission control.

NewsChannel 5 Skyped with her this afternoon.

"You start to get to know them, connect with them and I know how nervous and excited they were. So watching I felt like they felt," said Nobbe.

She will be back in the classroom Wednesday, and says she got hooked on space watching the Apollo 11 moon landing.

KSDK